ShareThisRight performance, wrong venue.
Again.
USC proved what just about everyone in the country already knew Thursday at the Rose Bowl -- that there isn't a team in the country that can turn them into underdogs right now.
That "news," of course, earns them a great big trophy made of smoke and one more spot in the Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda Hall of Fame.
It's familiar territory for Pete Carroll's Trojans, who for the past three years have wrapped up their season with a reputation as the scariest team in the nation, the program no one wants a part of ... and a comfy slot just outside the Bowl Championship Series title game.
USC crushed Penn State so badly in the first half Thursday that even the Nittany Lions tough guy coach Joe Paterno admitted it was over after 30 minutes.
"What was the score at halftime -- 31-7?" said Paterno, when someone asked him when he felt the game was "getting away" from them.
"I'd say it got away from us. Until it got to 31, I still thought we had a shot."
To its credit, Penn State kept fighting in the second half, and the Trojans, getting conservative -- and perhaps just a tad complacent or bored -- let the Lions out of the sleeper hold. The final was a more respectable 38-24.
By the end, Penn State can say it wasn't humiliated or embarrassed, but you wouldn't have bet that in the second quarter when USC quarterback Mark Sanchez was whipping darts at will through the Lions' secondary, and the Trojans scored on their last five possessions of the half.
USC dominated Penn State just like it dominated the last bazillion Big Ten teams to come West -- and solidified its legacy as the best team in the country that can't make it to a championship game.
This year's squad has been dealing with the issue ever since the Trojans lost to Oregon State in September, dropping them into a precarious BCS position from which they never recovered. It was frustrating two months ago. Annoying a month ago. By now it's just ancient history.
As usual, USC players were left, post-game, to explain the meaning of a Rose Bowl pounding, in the grand scheme of national rankings.
"I just feel blessed to be at this school," said junior safety Taylor Mays, who figures to be blessed as an early draft pick if he leaves for the NFL. "We felt this was our national championship game, and we played like it."
Senior cornerback Cary Harris answered the question with a weary smile.
"It really doesn't matter anymore," he said. "We played for the Rose Bowl, and we won."
Carroll couldn't even get out of the post-game trophy presentation without answering the what-if questions -- like how he would like to face Florida or Oklahoma, the two teams playing in the title game next week.
Carroll responded by saying how great he thought those two teams were, how they deserved the chance to play for the big prize, then said neither one of them would beat the Trojans. He reiterated the sentiment in the interview tent.
"We've been this way a lot of times," Carroll said. "I don't think anybody can beat us. This is a terrific finishing program."
No doubt the Trojans will wind up with their familiar spot near the top of the Associated Press final poll. They came into the game ranked No. 5 and have finished fourth or higher the past six years.
The Rose Bowl win was their third in a row, the first team to ever do that. They have been in seven consecutive BCS games, and won the same number of Pac-10 titles in a row -- all records.
Such stats will be this senior class' claim to fame. It will also be remembered as a group that just missed in the BCS title game to Texas, then just missed, just missed and just missed getting back there.
That doesn't mean they didn't enjoy their time. The Trojans spent much of the second quarter on the sideline, dancing en masse, swaying back and forth in one big team hug. Carroll said he was told by the officials at halftime that his team would get a 15-yard penalty if it kept it up.
Carroll said the only reason they didn't get flagged was because he "forgot" to tell his team to dance some more in the fourth quarter "just so we could get a penalty on us for having too much fun."
Football doesn't get much more fun than it does at Troy. Not much, anyway.
(Contact Gregg Patton at gpatton@PE.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
